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When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.

William Stafford

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William Stafford
Age: 79 †
Born: 1914
Born: January 17
Died: 1993
Died: August 28
Author
Poet
Writer
Hutchinson
Kansas
Snakes
Anywhere
Straight
Decided
Journey
Didn
Snake

More quotes by William Stafford

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You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say.
William Stafford
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A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.
William Stafford
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If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
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You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.
William Stafford
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I embrace emerging experience, I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector. I want the experience of the butterfly.
William Stafford
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You shouldn't have standards that inhibit you from writing It really doesn't make any difference if you are good or bad today. The assessment of the product is something that happens after you've done it.
William Stafford
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Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right now?
William Stafford
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The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.
William Stafford
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The earth says have a place, be what that place requires hear the sound the birds imply and see as deep as ridges go behind each other.
William Stafford
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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
William Stafford
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There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
William Stafford
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Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.
William Stafford
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What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.
William Stafford
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All still when summer is over stand shocks in the field, nothing left to whisper, not even good-bye, to the wind. After summer was over we knew winter would come: we knew silence would wait, tall, patient calm.
William Stafford
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Please think about this as you go on. Breathe on the world. Hold out your hands to it. When morning and evenings roll along, watch how they open and close, how they invite you to the long party that your life is.
William Stafford
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You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
William Stafford
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I am not learning definitions as established in even the latest dictionaries. I am not a dictionary-maker. I am a person a dictionary-maker has to contend with. I am a living evidence in the development of language.
William Stafford
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Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.
William Stafford
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...What you fear will not go away it will take you into yourself and bless you and keep you. That's the world, and we all live there.
William Stafford
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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
William Stafford